Drug Smuggler Hot Line Sizzles With Successes

Little old ladies, doing neighborhood surveillance from their porch-front rocking chairs, call the hot line with tips.

So-called ``druggies`` telephone to rat on their competition.

Husbands tattle on their wives. Wives fink on their husbands.

Amazingly, fewer than half of the 956 people who have called Florida`s drug smuggling hot line since it was conceived and installed in Miami a year ago by the U.S. Customs Service are looking for a reward.

``It`s been enlightening to see how people respond to this thing,`` said Bill Mayberry, director of Customs` intelligence for the southeast. ``It`s been more than we thought.``

A majority of the tips come from Broward and Dade counties. Some calls have come from the Caribbean Islands. Customs could soon be hearing from Bogota, Colombia, where hot-line literature written in Spanish has begun to be distributed.

While they get a good number of anonymous calls from people in the drug trade, a surprising number of tipsters are elderly Spanish-speaking women, Mayberry said.

``They see something going on outside the corner store, or someone dealing drugs in the park. A lot of the callers are just patriotic people who don`t like what is going on.``

Florida`s hot line was only an experiment at this time last year when the Customs Service began papering South Florida with posters showing a stern- looking Uncle Sam asking the public to report drug-smuggling activity.

Only 9 percent of the calls are useless. About half have nothing to do with the Customs Service and so are passed along to appropriate state and federal agencies.

Because so many cases are referred, statistics are incomplete as to how many tips led to arrests or seizures. A number of tips have been referred to Broward County police agencies, including the Broward Sheriff`s Office.

Now considered a success by Customs higher-ups, the toll-free 1-800-BE ALERT hot-line service was expanded in April to Georgia and the Carolinas.

Next month, publicity will be sent to residents in the Virginias, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee.

By the end of the summer, the hot-line territory again will grow to encompass the southwest border states.

``By early August we should be covering the area from San Diego around to the Chesapeake. (The Southwest) is a real hotbed in drug smuggling and arms smuggling,`` said Thomas Torr, who coordinates the hot-line project for the Customs Service out of Washington, D.C.

The hot line was designed to give the public an anonymous vehicle to report drug-smuggling activity, but the public has responded with tips of all kinds. Callers from the Carolinas have been reporting textiles fraud and some computer export-import fraud.

And someone in Dade County wanted to tip police about the possible killers of three people whose bodies were found floating in Biscayne Bay last year.

Mayberry is also hoping the hot line will provide leads on the distribution of child pornography materials.

Some of the tips have proved valuable, and about 30 people have stepped forward as confidential sources for law enforcement.

Agents have seized weapons, cocaine, vessels, an airplane and currency as a result of tips. To date, only $4,050 has been paid out in rewards. But once a number of ongoing investigations are concluded, Mayberry expects more people will be rewarded.

The biggest case involved a tip about two Miami money houses -- places were drug profits are counted and distributed -- that netted six arrests.

In another case a youth was paid $800 after his tip led to a successful raid on a stash house where weapons and drugs were seized.

``It`s more a patriotic and neighborhood pride feeling that is motivating people to call. They want to keep their neighborhoods clean,`` Torr said. ``We`ve made a great number of very good cases that otherwise we would not have had. It was a resource that was out there, but we were never able to tap it before.``